Moving from KeePass
to Steganos
Password Manager

KeePass is dependable and free – but a lot of it only comes together through extensions and apps from other providers: the browser connection, syncing between several devices, use on a smartphone. If you'd rather have that from a single source, you don't have to retype your entries: Steganos Password Manager reads KeePass exports directly.

One point up front, so it doesn't catch you off guard: The groups from KeePass don't come along. Every entry lands in the keychain with no folder assignment. How to handle that is explained further down.

Step 1: Export the right CSV format

The import understands two header rows, and which one you get depends on the program you work with.

• KeePass 2 (the original by Dominik Reichl): Export via File → Export into the format CSV (KeePass 1.x). The file then begins with
  "Account","Login Name","Password","Web Site","Comments"
• KeePassXC: Its own CSV export works unchanged. Its header row reads
  Group,Title,Username,Password,URL,Notes,TOTP,Icon,Last Modified,Created
  – with or without quotation marks, both are read.

The import can't read other output formats: neither the encrypted .kdbx database file itself nor the XML output from KeePass. It has to be one of the two CSV versions.

And as with every export: The file is unencrypted plain text. It holds every one of your passwords in readable form. Don't put it in a cloud folder, don't send it, and don't open and save it in Excel – that changes the separator and makes the file useless for the import.

Step 2: Read the export into Password Manager

1. Open Steganos Password Manager and unlock the keychain the entries are meant for. If you don't have one yet, create it first.
2. In the File menu open Import and choose Keepass Database... The entry reads both CSV versions named above; you don't have to say which one it is.
3. Select the file. Password Manager reports "Import successful" and the entries show up in the list.

What gets carried over – and what doesn't

From a KeePassXC export these come over:

• Title as the title of the entry
• Username and Password as the user name and the password
• URL as the website
• Notes as the note – multi-line notes keep their line breaks
• TOTP in the field for one-time passwords

From the KeePass 1.x format the title, user name, password, website and comment come over – there's no TOTP field there.

In both cases the groups aren't carried over, and neither are icons or the timestamps for modification and creation. For the folder structure you have two options:

• Export and import group by group. You export each group on its own and then assign the matching category in Password Manager for each pass. That's the clean way if your structure matters to you.
• Sort them afterward. Categories can be created and assigned right in the entry list in Password Manager – with a manageable number of entries that's quicker than several exports.

File attachments from KeePass don't come along either: the CSV export doesn't contain them at all.

Afterward: securely delete the export file

You now have a plain-text file with all your passwords on the drive. Dragging it to the Recycle Bin isn't enough – the data stays readable until the space is overwritten. Our guide "Why the Recycle Bin is not enough to securely delete your data" explains why that is.

Delete the file with a tool that overwrites it. Steganos Shredder does that and is included in Steganos Privacy Suite and in Steganos Data Safe. If you exported group by group you have several files – all of them, please.

If the import doesn't go through

If Password Manager reports "The data is not in the correct format.", the header row doesn't match. Open the file in Notepad and compare the first line with the two printed above. The most common case with KeePass 2: it wasn't the CSV (KeePass 1.x) format but one of the other output formats.

If the message says no entries could be found, the file is built correctly but holds nothing but the header row – in that case the wrong group, or an empty one, was selected during the export.